Urs Gerber

artist, painter

Urs Gerber attended the School of Design in Zurich from 1977 to 1981. It is the time of youth unrest and punk music, which suddenly descends on Zurich. Anyone can take an instrument into their hands and form a band – the energy creates the sound, everything is possible: in music as well as in painting. Installations and happenings everywhere. Preferably as unconventional, shrill, loud and witty as possible. Large-format, creative. And right in the middle of it all is the School of Design and its students.

Expressionism seems to be reborn for the young Zurich native. This time even stronger in its colour expressions, even bigger, even more striking and even more physical: Martin Disler with his eruptive pictorial language, Klaudia Schifferle with her oversized distorted human bodies; and then the invasion of the wild art scene from Berlin.

Urs Gerber lets himself get carried away, he paints like an obsessed man. With large brushes, with colours that are mixed, if at all, only on the painting surface – not on canvas, not enough time and money, but on cardboard from the roll, daringly wide and fifty meters long. His theme: the human body: in motion, dancing. Tightly wrapped, loving. The body accompanies Urs Gerber’s work for years. Almost obsessively, he searches for ways to unite the human body with its surroundings. The basis for his work are countless pencil sketches, which he produces week after week in the “Aktzeichnen Zürich” (nude drawing) workshop.

Later, his two sons (Tim and Mike) open up new perspectives to him. Other themes arise, a new creative period begins. Urs Gerber finds a new freedom, and suddenly even more is possible. Animals and landscapes, for example. Ocean moods, water reflections. He wins competitions for churches with his paintings. And in between, again and again Urs Gerber’s great passion: the human body.